Italy Region 4: MILANO

Italy Region 4: Milano is all about Gate Loot, a concept explained in detail in the prior entry on Region 3: Venezia.

To summarize, Gate Loot is an item that drops in one job and is needed to do a later job. You dealt with this in New York when you looked for the 60,000 Untraceable Cell Phones needed to complete the city.

Milano has two essential pieces of Gate Loot: Smart Phones and Cooked Books. In fact, if you look up "Milano" in an Italian-English dictionary, the name translates loosely to "City of Smart Phones and Cooked Books." Well, not really... but for Mafia Wars purposes, it might as well.

The Smart Phone drops frequently in Milano's first job (Free a Professional Assassin). You are going to need scores of Smart Phones because they are Gate Loot for TWO jobs in Milano itself:

Bug A Confessional (Energy Path)

Infilatrate a Seven Star Hotel (Fight Path)

The Smart Phone is ALSO Gate Loot for *THREE* jobs in Region 5 - Napoli.

Best of all - you guessed it - you cannot (yet) gift, trade, or Wishlist a Smart Phone.

Sound confusing? Use this Italy Gate Loot Flowchart to visualize how the Smart Phones and Cooked Books are acquired and used in Milano and Napoli.

Stock up on Smart Phones before you level up in Milano! You will likely need close to 1,000 Smart Phones to complete the *FIVE* different jobs that use them as Gate Loot all the way to Ruby Level in both Milano and Napoli. The more Smart Phones you earn at lower energy costs (i.e., Bronze Level), the smarter you are.

Same advice goes for Milano's second key Gate Loot item: Cooked Books. Two jobs in Milano drop Cooked books: Blackmail a Track Official (Energy Path) and Interrogate a Lackey (Fight Path). Fortunately, you can use both energy and stamina in Milano to stock up on the Cooked Books.

An upcoming post on this blog will have an Italy Gate Loot flowchart, showing what jobs drop and require each type of Gate Loot found in Italy.

Milano Village Property: Milano's Property Job (Rob a Collector) opens your fourth Italian Village Property, the Auto Boutique. (shown below in its humble, Level I condition).

As you upgrade further, your Auto Boutique will look like this at Level VI:

You can see the completed Auto Boutique by clicking here.

Motor Oil is the unique part needed to upgrade your Auto Boutique, comparable to Volcanic Bricks, Wine Barrels, and Fishing Nets for your other Village Properties.

Milano Drop Loot: Milano's items have stats with a combined attack/defense in the mid-70s to mid-80s, but a Weapon and two Animals are here that will make your top 501 in all likelihood.

*Marsican Brown Bear* (Animal)

*Milano Foil* (Weapon)

*Eagle Owl* (Animal)

*Maglietta* (Armor)

*Diavolo Piccolo SMG * (Weapon)

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Milano Boss(es): You will face the Volovino Twins - renowned car dealers - in the Milano Boss fight.

In Milano-Bronze level, the Volovino Twins (acting as one) have 1,800 health and no henchmen. Not a difficult fight.

Your reward for defeating the Volovino Twins is the Italiano Gazzeti, a Vehicle with nice attack AND defense stats.

In Milano-Silver level, the Volovino Twins increase their Health to 2,700 ... or is it 4,000? Either way, easy to beat.

The Silver-level Auto Elettrica moves up to 108A/80D stats:

At Milano Gold level, your rivals move up to 12,000 Health.

And the Gold-level Auto Elletrica has 139A/89D stats.

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Milano Strategy Tip: When you get to Region 5 - Napoli, you will see how many hundreds and hundreds of Smart Phones and Cooked Books you go through. If possible, stay at Bronze Level in Milano as long as your patience will allow, building up stockpiles of the Smart Phones and Cooked Books.

I finished Napoli's Ruby level before I took on the Silver-level Volovino Twins, just to keep the Smart Phones and Cooked Books cheap.

In Milano's Silver Level, a Smart Phone will cost you 65 energy points, while a Cooked Book will set you back either 75 energy or 39 stamina points. The costs are much cheaper at Bronze level - and start to get prohibitive at Gold level. Naturally, you want to get to Napoli, but remember that racing through now will slow you down later, when you need to complete a stockpile of - by my estimate - close to 1,000 of each.

At some point, whether you've followed the advice above, ignored it, or done half of each, it's time to move on to Region 5 - Napoli.

Red Mystery Bag - New Rewards

Mystery bags have changed up rewards a bit and there is now a "Red Mystery Bag" available for gifting.

Here are some of the rewards I have gotten:

+100 Energy Points
+1 free reward point
+5 Free Reward Points
+5 Skill Points (best!)
Valentine's Day Heart Tattoo (previously was quite rare)
$B5000
Snow Leopard
Misc. assorted boosts

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For some reason I am unable to receive any more mystery bags and every time I try to accept one it says "you have already accepted the Red Mystery Bag from that person" even though I was only able to open a few bags before getting this message.

New "Top Mafia" Page is NOT Live

Shortly after the introduction of Paris and robbing in all cities, the Top Mafia page has undergone a major stealth change, as I am sure many of you have noticed:


On this page you can promote mafia members to one of four tiers: Captains (holds 2 members), Lieutenants (holds 4 members), Enforcers (holds 6 members), and Street Thugs (holds 6 members). If you have an entire tier filled with players, you can collect a bonus item every 24 hours (per full tier). Unfortunately, the bonuses do not seem to be very good; I received 30 xp and 2 mid-level boosts as rewards.

The catch is that only "active" players (I am guessing they have to log in at least once every few days) will count, so good luck filling your street thug tier with active players who have to be under level 19! Don't worry though; you can send players who are MIA messages so that they will log in:

Hey "The Beast", mind logging in to I can collect my 30 XP bonus?

At any rate, aside from a few lame bonuses and the 3 achievements associated with the Top Mafia slot, there doesn't seem to be much use from the top mafia. You can see that a function called "Street War" will be in game soon and will somehow make use of this new system.

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Okay, now onto the elephant in the room. All your old Top Mafia bonuses are gone! That means each job now costs 11% more energy and pays out 11% XP! Combine that with the fact that you can no longer get Top Mafia Wheelman or Top Mafia Mastermind bonuses and we end up with a pretty big job XP nerf.

This goes for all jobs in all cities. But hey, you get a few chances a day to get a boost or 30 XP, who cares about losing 22% efficiency?

Seriously though, if this stays as is, this is a major game change. You will no longer be able to level up energy accounts. This may not seem like a big deal at first, but this essentially cements in the "status quo" of the game. Most of the more serious players already have very high level energy account(s) and possibly a high level fighter account. These accounts were built by taking advantage of synergistic game mechanics, and now new players will no longer be able to take advantage of this.

Why is this important? Because new players will never be able to catch up to high level players unless some new system comes in that will allow players to torch through old cities and get 1000 attack / defense accounts within a few months. Otherwise, any new player just won't stand a chance and will end up quitting. It happens with all role-playing games - with each new expansion, less and less players enter the world, as there are more hurdles to jump before they can play at the same level as other more established players.

At any rate, sucks if you don't have an energy account. Everyone that already has one will now have an advantage over you! Sorry!

While one could argue that since this is happening to all players, it's not really a "nerf" to anyone since everyone is being brought down to the same level, but that is just not looking at the whole picture. What it all boils down to is that most people play this game because, at a very basic level, they like watching numbers go up. Really! Moving from level 487 to 488 and seeing the "Congratulations" text pop up with the guy smoking the cigar leads to a little bit of dopamine release and encourages the player to continue playing. And if leveling rates are reduced, people will enjoy the game that much less. I just can't see one reason for a change like this given the game's age and established player base.

On the Topic of Game Changes..

As many, of you may have noticed, there are a bunch of new minor features in game:

1. Players now receive a reward point for logging in each day. Pretty cut and dry, can't complain about that!

2. There is a new add mafia and gift accepting tab when you open up Mafia Wars:

What a lovely name...

Adding people to your mafia is now definitely easier and faster than before. The gift accepting thing still seems to run through Facebook so it is about the same speed as before.

3. Players now have to click an extra button to help people on jobs. Originally, it seem that this change cut out the experience points bonus:


However, this was later changed back to getting an XP bonus:


I think the problem with this "nerf" (even though helping people for XP is not a massive source of XP) is that people are inherently selfish and can't be bothered to click a help link unless they are going to get something for doing it!

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However, it still seems that the developers are looking for ways to get rid of power-leveling with energy accounts. Different changes are being experimented with and we really can't be sure of what might change in the coming weeks. Unfortunately, any major changes are about a year too late, as players of all types depend on current game mechanics to play their accounts.

I touched on this exact issue back in December in this post. The only reason players played energy accounts in the first place was because at that time, there was no other meaningful activity else do to besides spend energy. There was no real reward from fighting. This is the only reason energy accounts existed.

While I'm not going to rehash on why energy accounts exist, I will repeat that the best way to draw players away from energy accounts is to make fighting more appealing. I will also restate that nerfing the amount of xp per energy point simply encourages more people to put points in energy. An attack/defense heavy account has a hard enough time completing content as it is, anything that negatively affects them will only make it worse.

So far, I would say the developers are doing a good job since the turn of the year in promoting fighting. Robbing so far is a nice addition. It provides pretty good XP per stamina, and the Diamond collection is pretty valuable.

The Chop Shop and Weapons Depot also give fighting characters a meaningful method of progression, since players can rob for weapons and car pieces and earn permanent stat increases each day. It would be a nice change to allow the "rare" weapon pieces, like the railgun barrel, to drop from good records on robbing grid clears. This would allow a true balanced account to acquire these rare pieces which are currently most easily gathered from jobs.

Apparently there is some more fighting-oriented stuff in the works like the Fight Club and Street War or something along those lines. Adding these things in will draw people into the fighting game and out from mindlessly putting points into energy.

Street Thug Job Changes

As I'm sure many of you have noticed, the Street Thug tier got a stealth make-over sometime during the day today:


Let's clear some things up:

- First off, it's clear that this is 1) some sort of test and 2) rushed and incomplete.

- Secondly, there still does appear to be three tiers, though they may not be working for everyone.

- Thirdly, it seems like I (and many others) lost job mastery randomly on some of the jobs. As a side note, I tried mastering these jobs and while I was able to regain my lost mastery, I did not get a new skill point for mastering the job.

- Additionally, it does not appear to show any loot requirements to participate in the jobs. I think this is just a bug, since it doesn't show what jobs drop items either, yet loot still drops.

- Finally, I don't necessarily see this as an attempt to revamp the actual structure of the game but simply the developers converting more features to Flash rather than text. All the jobs in Street Thug can now be repeated really quickly and it seems like the conversion to flash will increase the ease of playing.

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More Robbing Details and Information

have
So, earlier today a new post was mentioned containing more information on the upcoming re-implementation of robbing. Here is how it is going to work:

When you click on the "robbing" tab, you will be given access to a "grid" of a few properties, from which you can decide who you want to rob.




Couple of things:

1. For robbing properties, you get experience for a separate leveling bar. Level 10, the top level, earns you the title of Grand Master Thief (hopefully you can use that as your profile name) and an unknown reward item.

2. You can earn robbing collection pieces from robbing.

3. Note that the difficulty level of each property is already calculated for you. So when you decide to rob an easy target, you'll probably win 100% of the time, and if you decide to rob a "Hard" target, you'll probably lose 100% of the time. Turns out you won't need to use your brain with the new feature.

4. Also, note that the stamina cost appears to vary from property to property. In the picture above, robbing a casino appears to cost 20 stamina. This may depend on the level of the property, we will have to find out. It's a nice change either way, as spending a few hundred stamina can be a pain. Hopefully the reward for spending that extra stamina matches the cost.

5. Getting new targets appears to cost stamina (note top left of the picture). So if you can't find anyone to beat on the robbing list, it looks like you'll have to spend some stamina to get a new list.

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While it's too early to make too many assumptions, I can safely assume that robbing will be stamina intensive (20 stamina for robbing the casino in the pic above, and 6 stamina just to get targets). As a result, I'd recommend stocking up on stamina over the next few days if you plan on doing a lot of robbing. The Rebel 2 chop shop car gives +5 stamina for building - considering making one of those each day until robbing comes out

Mafia Wars Marketplace Now Live

So, the Mafia Wars Marketplace that has been mentioned over the last few days was just added into the game.

Essentially, the Godfather store has become flash-based. Note the menu bar on the side - you can scroll through for a variety of items of different sorts. This effectively lets Zynga sell more items in the Godfather store without making the page look cluttered.

There is no real significant changes except that now you can buy practically every type of boost and a large variety of limited edition loot pieces.

One of the more noticeable changes actually has nothing to do with the new interface, but rather the fact that there are now limited edition loot pieces which have a decent stat advantage over best-in-slot loot pieces.

Example of a few items you can buy:

Widowmaker (weapon; 27 attack, 52 defense)

Twin AK 47's (weapon; 52 attack, 26 defense)

Twin Garza 9s (weapon; 53 attack, 24 defense)

Love Birds (weapon; 26 attack, 53 defense)

Armed Doorman (armor; 51 attack, 24 defense)

Motorcycle Jacket (25 attack, 50 defense)

Mountain Goat (vehicle; 22 attack, 52 defense)

Crop Duster (vehicle; 52 attack, 28 defense)


While it was about time they made limited edition loot pieces worth while, the thing is that these higher end items now cost 35 godfather points. Ouch!

That seems like all with the Marketplace.. just expect 5-15 new limited edition loot pieces each week rather than the normal 3 pieces.

Chop Shop New York Property

For the first time in well over a year, there is a new property available in New York, the Chop Shop!


However, you can't buy it. You have to "build" it with free gifts:


Essentially, there are 5 different item types that you will need to pick up 10 of each from your friends (50 total items). The only thing is that each person only has access to 2 of the Chop Shop items, so you will need to collect from at least 3 different friends! To send these items to your Mafia Friends, simply go to the free gifts page and look for the items labeled "Chop Shop".


Here are the 5 items required to build your shop:

Acetylene Torches
Cement Blocks
Power Tools
Car Lift
Shipping Containers

You will need 10 of each! Alternatively, you can buy pieces for one godfather point.


Once completed, your Chop Shop is a standalone building that produces 1 random vehicle each day. The quality of the vehicle seems to be completely random as noted by the info in game - you can end up coming back for the day to collect a completely worthless vehicle or a good one. I see it as more of an incentive for people to check out this developing properties page.

Bangkok Job Mastery Loot Rewards

I figured I would consolidate all of the Mafia Wars Bangkok Job Mastery item rewards in a single post rather than having them spread out across several posts. Additionally, I now have in-game pics of the 5A and 5B rewards, and since I am a bit picky over these sorts of things, I wanted to have the actual pictures before I posted up the stats. With that said, here they are:

Episode 1 (Brawler) - Tiger Sak Yant (armor; 65 attack, 42 defense)



Episode 2 (Criminal) - Royal Thai Police Tank (vehicle; 58 attack, 74 defense)



Episode 3 (Pirate) - Harpoon Cannon (weapon; 88 attack, 51 defense)



Episode 4 (Commandant) - Armored War Elephant (vehicle; 96 attack, 69 defense)

I'm sure the Thai government is thrilled that an Armored War Elephant is considered more powerful than their royal tanks.

Episode 5A (Oyabun) - Ronin Armor (armor; 72 attack, 111 defense)

Episode 5B (Dragon Head) - Typhoon Cleavers (weapon; 70 attack, 112 defense)


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So, it looks like this is it for Bangkok. Overall, even with the 4 levels of mastery and the pirates, satellite phones, and drug shipments, it was definitely easier for me to complete then pre-nerf Moscow (though I'm sure the 25% mini energy packs helped with that).

On the whole, the loot upgrades are fairly disappointing. The thought of collecting 500 Lloyds Spectres for a measly 500 defense points is not all that appealing to me, and the fact that many of the best drops from Bangkok are tied with those of Moscow just adds insult to injury.

I do like the idea of 2 "best" items (armor in this case) being from the faction store, but it certainly is a bit disappointing that these 2 very expensive armors are the only real way to advance my character in fighting. Due to their high cost, it doesn't seem like it will be possible to get more than 5 or so of these armors per day (and that's being very generous, most players will get 1 per day or even less) - and since you need 1,000 to completely outfit your mafia, it'd take anywhere from 6 months to a couple years to completely outfit your mafia.

Who knows though, if this trend of not getting upgrades continues, these expensive armor pieces still might be the best-in-slot in Las Vegas!

Crisis Crates Loot List

The old Bangkok Crates were replaced by a new set, Crisis Crates, late last night in Mafia Wars.


And here is the loot list:

Weapons:

Fire Axe (common): 26 attack, 17 defense

Battering Ram (common): 28 attack, 14 defense

Shock Paddles (uncommon): 36 attack, 16 defense

Shaped Charge (rare): 51 attack, 25 defense - about time there was a decent loot piece from the crates


Armor:

EMT (uncommon): 18 attack, 35 defense

Ironside Tactical Vest (rare): 27 attack, 49 defense


Vehicles:

Hook and Ladder (common): 15 attack, 27 defense

Trauma Chopper (uncommon): 21 attack, 34 defense


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While the Shaped Charge might seem good, these are still a waste of GF points. It looks like they are headed on the right direction by making the rare items slightly better than the best-in-slot loot pieces. It's just not worth it right now though, especially since those pieces have such a low % drop rate.

Common items should be as good as uncommon items are now, uncommon items should be comparable (maybe 1-2 point advantage) over the best-in-slot pieces, and the rare items should be 8-10 points ahead of the best-in-slot loot pieces. This wouldn't create an unfair advantage for anyone, because it's not like anyone would buy the 3,000 crates needed to completely outfit their character, and even if they did, if they spent those 30,000 GF points that would be required on +4 stats, they would be unstoppable anyway.

Mafia Wars Property Change

The new property change is now live for *most players*. Check it out:


Some of the properties have changed names. Furthermore, some properties need to be collected as often as every 2 hours, whereas others only need to be collected once every other day. For most players (myself included), the properties with a collect time of less than 24 hours just lost a lot of value. Here is the property list:


Louie's Deli (can not be upgraded) - needs to be collected hourly.

Flophouse - needs to be collected every 8 hours.

Pawnshop - needs to be collected every 24 hours.

Tenement - needs to be collected every 48 hours.

Warehouse - needs to be collected every 12 hours.

Restaurant - needs to be collected every 2 hours.

Dockyard - needs to be collected every 8 hours.

Office Park - needs to be collected every 12 hours.

Uptown Hotel - needs to be collected every 24 hours.

Mega Casino - needs to be collected every 48 hours.

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Undeveloped lots were automatically converted into cash for players; lots are no longer purchaseable.

Players also now upgrade their buildings rather than buy new ones. If you had 300 mega casinos prior to the update, you will now have a "Level 300 Mega Casino".

Overall, this appears to be a nerf as some properties need to be collected manually every few hours, whereas before, many people did not have to collect a take at all (myself included).

The real purpose behind this change (I hope) is to allow players to rob each other's high level properties for some big $ and also give property some unique features (hence the map that is "Coming Soon".

I'm looking forward to it, and will withhold further judgment until more information becomes available.

I also have no idea what will happen for people with rackets, and if those influence points will be refunded. Good luck!

Episode 5A Yakuza vs Triads; Bangkok Strategy

Outlined below is a loot and job list highlighting the differences between the siding with the Triads or the Yakuza. This is where it starts to get important as higher quality loot is on the line, so pay attention and choose wisely!


Chapter 2

The Yakuza Tier

The "Help Broker A Minato-Matsumura Peace" job drops the Yakuza-only Scalding Hot Tea (weapon; 26 attack, 35 defense)

The Triad Tier

The "Assassinate The Minato-Kai Family Head" job drops the Triad-only Kage Jet (vehicle; 27 attack, 42 defense).

Conclusion: Don't be fooled by the stats on the Kage Jet; it is the same as an Armored State Car which has little value on the market. Siding with the Triads here costs extra drug shipments for the "Frame An Enemy For The Murder" job, so pick Yakuza.

Chapter 3

The Yakuza Tier

The "Gather More Evidence Of A Betrayal" job drops the Yakuza-only Tanto (weapon; 43 attack, 28 defense). This item is tied with the Ubijca Assault Rifle (from Moscow Episode 5) as the best in slot weapon. Since this job has no consumable requirement, this is a good way to farm $B. Note that the first time through, this job only costs 71 energy; with the lotto collection, farming these items can be quite efficient.


The Triad Tier


The "Spread Distrust Among the Yakuza Families" job drops the Triad-only Optical Camo Suit (armor; 43 attack, 26 defense).


Conclusion: The Optical Camo Suit is garbage; the Shturmovik from Episode 4 of Moscow has 2 more attack points. Pick Yakuza here

Job Mastery Rewards for Bangkok Episodes 3 and 4

I now have the job mastery items for both episodes 3 and 4 of Mafia Wars Bangkok available for you all to see:

For mastering Pirate (Episode 3), you will get the Harpoon Cannon (88 attack, 51 defense):


For mastering Commandant (Episode 4), you will get the Armored War Elephant (96 attack, 69 defense):


At this rate, it looks like the rewards for Episodes 5A and 5B will be a weapon and body armor piece with 100+ defense on each. Will have more information soon.

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Other relevant Mafia Wars Bangkok information:

- After completing the first level of mastery on Episode 4, players will have access to both Episodes 5A and 5B, assuming they have the faction. Episode 5A requires Trusted with the Triads, and Episode 5B requires Trusted with the Yakuza. I can only see this being an issue if you paid no attention to faction in previous episodes and sided with one side the entire time, as you can rack up quite a bit of faction will earning enough $B to beat the earlier tiers. It looks like Episode 5B will be slightly more expensive in terms of consumable and $B needed to pass through. However, Episode 5B has no collection associated with it currently.

- If you are having trouble with the Bangkok frames (can't scroll around or click things), do this: Run Firefox as your browser, simply right click on the Mafia Wars background, scroll down to "This Frame" and then click on "show this frame only". That will load the Mafia Wars game in its own window.

- The Mafia Wars Toolbar appears to be issuing mini-energy packs once again. I just got a 25% boost.




- It appears that all of that Bangkok loot that was available in fighting a week or two back is all of the current new loot in game. There are no "new" items then with the release of Bangkok that you can collect large numbers of. I am a bit surprised by this as it makes the only clear upgrade over Moscow loot to be the two armor pieces purchasable in the faction store, and the cost of these items is so high it does not seem if these will be easily collectible in large quantities.


Up-and-coming Updates:

I will post the rest of the Yakuza vs Triad info, loot lists, job mastery rewards, and any other pertinent information that I may have missed. If you have any other requests for Bangkok information, feel free to ask in the comments section.

Yakuza or Triads Episode 3; Bangkok Strategy

The battle for Bangkok rages on, and the ever present question still remains - Yakuza or Triads? I figured this would be good to post up as soon as possible, as there is a definite advantage of choosing one faction over the other in Episode 3.

I have broken this post down into two sections. If you want the short answer, in Episode 3, Chapter 2 - pick whichever side you fancy. In episode 3, Chapter 3, pick Yakuza every single time. For exact differences between tiers and faction-specific loot, read on!


Episode 3, Chapter 2

The Yakuza tier:


The "Truck the Cargo to Kuala Lumpur" job is Yakuza-only and drops the MalayMobil Helang (vehicle; 19 attack, 34 defense):



Alternatively, the Triad tier:


The "Ship the Cargo To Jarkarta" job drops the Triad-only Komodo Dragon (weapon; 34 attack, 22 defense):




Conclusion:

There is no real advantage to choosing one tier over the other here. Note that the "Hijack a Boat Load of Electronics" job will need to be repeated for consumables down the line, so consider finalizing the choice with your lowest faction.



Episode 3, Chapter 3

The Yakuza Tier:


The "Sink A Chinese Metals Freighter" job drops the Yakuza-only Seua Daao Sub (vehicle; 35 attack, 22 defense):




Alternatively, the Triad tier:



The "Steal Japanese Auto Shipping Containers" drops the Triad-only Fugama Kame SUV (vehicle; 33 attack, 22 defense):



Conclusion

The "Offload The Cars Onto A Waiting Barge" job is Triad-only and costs 1x Satellite Phone (a consumable dropped earlier in the tier and used in other episodes extensively) while the Yakuza-only version does not require a consumable. As a result, you always want to pick Yakuza in Episode 3, Chapter 3. There is no reason to pick Triad for this section.